Australia's Weird Tradition

I want to highlight this post from Cian Gill's Age of Empire blog about Australian weird fiction. Besides being a review of Australian Ghost Stories edited by James Doig, it forms an excellent commentary on this isolated continent's weird fiction tradition. What comes across in the analysis and quotations selected by Gill is a conflicted legacy. Australian writers of ghostly and Gothic stories, prior to the late 20th century, appear to be stricken with a shadow of inferiority hanging over their work. This is a curious contrast with the way things have developed in the United States and even Canada. Australia, like both of these other nations, is home to a wonderful array of otherworldly terrain, native traditions, and historical occurrences that should make it a natural mental playground for the weird.

Yet, oddly, Australia's weird literary flowering seems stunted until late last century. It's easy to wonder whether this has something to do with the nation's colonial legacy and a confused, sometimes violent legacy with its aboriginal population. But, then, if this is the case, what about the U.S. and Canada? All of these nations were originally British imperial extensions, though America broke away much sooner than either Canada or Australia. Further, both North American nations share Australia's difficult history with other ethnic groups--native or otherwise--that happened to settle sooner or later than the dominant population.

Other observations by Gill bring up the interesting question of a society's perceived age. Australian horror writers quoted in his article express uncertainty over the worth of their own spiritual and cultural traditions, which appears correlated with a feeling of immaturity. Once again, this is more serious and quite different than both the U.S. and Canada. The former country saw Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce rise to prominence within less than a century of its establishment. Lovecraft's work came along not long after, and expresses some of its psychic strength in Lovecraft's devotion to, what is to him, a rich and archaic American colonial experience. Canadian weird fiction took longer to flower, but its unique national features were attractive enough by the early 20th century to be used by foreigners like Algernon Blackwood in "The Wendigo." Meanwhile, British writers have produced the majority of earlier weird fiction, especially that a ghostly kind, by drawing on the country's Medieval cities and ancient myths left by Romans and Celtic tribes.

The question of national perceived age among literary circles may be an imperfect one for explaining why there was such a delayed outgrowth of strange fiction in places like Australia, but it's definitely one that must be considered. It's also worth noting that modern Australia has overcome an initial hesitancy to draw on its natural resources as an expression of unusual and haunting horrors. The Australian Horror Writers' Association publishes an annual journal called "Studies in Australian Weird Fiction." Additionally, the Australian Ghost Stories volume recognizes the existence and importance of weird horror in Australia's past and present.

-Grim Blogger